


The Druid and the Wolf

by Jmeelee



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha and Emissary, Alternate Universe, Beltane, Druid!Stiles, Druids, M/M, Sex Magic, Sterek Week 2017, Wolfed Out Derek, sterekalphaemissary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-22 22:30:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12492244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jmeelee/pseuds/Jmeelee
Summary: Queen Talia looked him up and down, scrutinized his tall, slender frame swallowed up by the speckled tunic of his clan, and seemed as skeptical of his abilities as his clansmen had been ever since his birth. “Hewill help?” she asked, eyeing the rabbit blood still smeared on his hands. “But he is a boy barely grown, and pale as the moon.”“He is young,” the Seer granted, “but he is a man. This is my son, Stiles, andThe Great Fire of Lifesparks in his blood. He is destined for greatness, I have seen it. Bring your children to our camp, and he will be of invaluable service to them.”The Queen turned her head toward the setting sun and closed her eyes, resigned. “They are here.”Wind off the sea slipped icy fingers through the trees and ran up his spine. Stiles glanced around the clearing, searching for unfamiliar faces, but none could be found.“No, Druid,” the Queen sighed, finally addressing Stiles. He looked back to her. “They arehere.” She lifted up her palms, and three wolves stepped forward.





	The Druid and the Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> For Sterek Week 2017, Day 1: Alpha and Emissary
> 
> This is an emissary origin story based loosely on the shows mythology of King Lycaon and the Druids.

He was crouched behind his family’s lodge, skinning a rabbit for dinner, when Queen Hale walked into his clan hold, flanked by three huge wolves. She approached his mother, Seer of their tribe, with little fanfare despite the massive animals at her side, and pleaded in a voice that was plagued by desperation. “I require the help of the Druids.”

Stiles scooped up his boots and raced through the fort, dodging people and hounds and hens, leaping over baskets and midden heaps, stumbling and hopping forward as he slid his boots on and tied the leather thongs around his shins. He almost always went barefoot, to better feel the energy in the ground. His clan had long since ignored this, and many other strange habits of his, but he did not want to appear a barbarian in front of the queen. A crowd had already gathered to gape at the snarling wolves and splendid woman, who was wearing a robe of deep purple draped over her shoulder. He hung back, fidgeting at the edge of the crowd. His mother’s eyes darted around the clansmen, seeking his face, and when she did not immediately find him, her chest rose and fell in an exasperated huff.

“I am happy to see you looking so well, Queen Talia,” his mother greeted with a respectful incline of her head. This woman was a queen, but she was not the queen of Claudia the Seer, exalted member of the Order of the Wise. Druids were free. “I had heard whispers on the wind of a great sickness in your family.”  


“Lycaon, the King, is dead,” Talia said, and the wolves slinking around her legs whined mournfully. The clansmen started to murmur and shuffle from foot to foot, more fearful of the volatile animals than the news of a foreign king’s death. The queen reached out her hands, and two of the three wolves came to her, allowed her fingers to rub through the scruff at their napes. The third wolf, darker and larger that the other two, shied away from the queen’s touch. “Words whispered on the wind can be misunderstood. It was not a sickness that claimed him, Seer. It was a curse, dark magic cast by a powerful enemy to our family during the Blood Moon. My children… they still live, but the curse has enslaved their spirits.”  


Claudia nodded, brow furrowed and her beautiful face solemn. “The Chief is away tonight, preparing for the Beltane festival tomorrow, so if you have come to seek my husband’s counsel, I am afraid he will not be able to help. But, I know someone who can.” This time her eyes found him immediately.  


The crowd shifted and parted, eyes casting toward him and away. The murmurs were back, but this time they were disbelieving. He strode forward with all the confidence he could muster, lips moving of their own volition, imploring _That Which Watched_ to guide him, to make him capable of whatever momentous task his mother believed he could accomplish. He came to stand before the two powerful women, and bowed his head in respect to the Queen. This close, he could sense the unique thrum of exceptional dark magic surrounding her. It left him feeling dislocated from the earth, and he fought the urge to sway on his feet.  


Queen Talia looked him up and down, scrutinized his tall, slender frame swallowed up by the speckled tunic of his clan, and seemed as skeptical of his abilities as his clansmen had been ever since his birth. “ _He_ will help?” she asked, eyeing the rabbit blood still smeared on his hands. “But he is a boy barely grown, and pale as the moon.”  


“He is young,” the Seer granted, “but he is a man. This is my son, Stiles, and _The Great Fire of Life_ sparks in his blood. He is destined for great things, I have seen it. Bring your children to our camp, and he will be of invaluable service to them.”  


His stomach took this unfortunate moment to gurgle its dismay over missing dinner, effectively ruining his mother’s attempt to promote his gifts.  
The Queen turned her head toward the setting sun and closed her eyes, resigned. “They are here.” 

Wind off the sea slipped icy fingers through the trees and ran up his spine. Stiles glanced around the clearing, searching for unfamiliar faces, but none could be found.  


“No, Druid,” the Queen sighed, finally addressing Stiles. He looked back to her. “They are _here_.” She lifted up her palms, and the three wolves stepped forward. 

+++

He was a child at his mother’s knee, his head not yet reaching her hip, the first time he heard his clansmen talk disparagingly about the son of the Chief.  


Even as young as he was, he had loved to slip off his boots and walk at night beneath the faded stars, strangely content with only the moon for company. Through the doorways he would overhear random bits of conversation: comments on food and harvests and weather, rumbling laughter, the sharp edge of angry words. He heard them talk of the Chief Druid and his young wife, the powerful Seer who had only bore her husband a single son, and proclaimed there would be no others from her womb. Her child, she swore, was destined for great power.  


As far as Stiles could tell, the only talent he seemed to possess was the power to thoroughly annoy everyone in their clan with his clumsiness and incessant talking.  


“There is a pattern, my son,” Claudia had told him, over and over when he doubted the gifts she claimed he owned. “From the moon you love to stare at, to the trees and the animals big and small, every creation is part of one design. It is infinite, constantly circling, connecting us in life and in death.”  


“I don’t see any design. There is no pattern that I can find,” he told her desperately as the years went by and his power did not manifest. “How do you recognize it?”  


“The day you know the answer to that question, the day you see it, is the day you will truly be a Druid. You will feel it in your blood, in your bones.”  


“I feel nothing but alone,” he confessed.  


She stroked calloused fingertips over his shorn hair. “One day, there will be someone, a soul friend, as different from you as fire is to water. Your power will call out to them, like a song. They will need you, and you will be invaluable to each other. Until then, to be druid is to learn, so learn all you can. This is your destiny, to never stop learning and enable greatness in others. The people of our tribe are embedded in the ordinary, but you, my son, are not. In this you stand solitary, but you won’t be alone forever.”  


And so he grew, always knowing his destiny was the limitless dark sky and the lonely spaces between the stars. Stiles’ destiny was the promise of magic, and it awoke in his bones the day the wolves came. 

+++  


The queen had three children; her eldest daughter, Laura, her son, Derek, who would be King, and a younger daughter, Cora. All three were now great, shaggy wolves, staring with soulful eyes at a bewildered and slightly horrified Stiles.  


“Derek is my heir,” Talia told Stiles and Claudia, motioning toward the largest wolf with the shiny black coat. “It was his betrothed who cursed our family, Kate Argent. Derek was courting Gerard Argent’s daughter, hoping for a truce between our families, as we have been at war for generations.” Derek, the wolf, let out a low, menacing growl. “But Kate used Derek’s interest to lower our defenses. She had a witch cast the curse, turning Derek and his sisters into wolves, which left Lycaon undefended. Gerald killed him.” Laura, a lean, tawny wolf, pawed the dirt at her mother’s feet. “Kate meant to cage Derek, chain him and display him to all our kingdom in a demonstration of her family’s power, but he and his sisters escaped. I must find a way to turn my children human again, to protect them from the Argents.”  


Claudia took Talia’s hands. “Let me look into the flames for guidance. Stiles, Queen Talia, bring the wolves into our lodge.”  


The whole tribe helped them gather kindling and build a fire on Stiles’ family hearth. Once inside, his mother knelt before the fire and closed her eyes. It was then that the clansmen left them, and all that could be heard inside the lodge was the whining of wolves and the popping of wood on the fire.  


From a leather pouch tied to her girdle, his mother took out an assortment of dried herbs and powers. One at a time she sprinkled them onto the licking flames. Some were as pungent as ripe fruit, others as bittersweet as half-forgotten memories. Another was as foul as burning hair. The three wolves darted forward to inspect his mother’s ministrations, and started to sneeze uncontrollably when they smelled the last powder. Stiles would never admit it aloud, but in that moment he found them all endearing.  


Claudia’s fingers weaved the clouds of smoke rising from the flames into grotesquely writhing shapes. Queen Talia watched, captivated. Three times Claudia paused to turn and assess the wolves. The third time, she spoke in words too low for Stiles’ ears to report. She used three buckets of water to kill the flames, and then sank down to her haunches beside the drowned ashes, staring with eyes that saw some distant future. Three was the number of fate, and never had Stiles felt more attuned to that in all his eighteen years.  


His mother’s hair clung to the sweaty, damp skin at her temples in wet strings, and her skin was deathly pale. The queen looked worried, but Stiles had seen his mother divine the future so many times, it felt as soothing as fingers caressing his brow.  


“It is him,” his mother finally gasped. The black wolf, Derek, snarled and gnashed his teeth in her direction. “He is the one. Touch him, Stiles,” she commanded. “Hands here, over the wolf’s head, palms down.” This close, he could smell the unique scent of the animal: clean fur, bloody meat, fragrant pine trees and sheer wildness. He was beautiful, magnificent to behold, from the ruff of dark fur at his neck, to his long forelegs and slender, delicate toes.  


Derek growled and crouched low to the ground, ears tight against his head. Stiles wondered if his mother’s vision had included him losing a hand, or at least a few fingers. He hung back a step, hands hesitating at his sides.  


“Embrace your fear,” Claudia whispered. “Fear is a tool of magic. Find him, Stiles. Bring him home. It is time.” He placed his shaking hands to the wolf’s head, and his lodge fell away. 

+++++

Stiles was expelled into lightness, tumbled into the unknown. He reached out, grasped at the stars, hungry for the sensation of touch, and slipped and slid, coming to rest in a warm chamber lit by a dim red glow. Inside the chamber, existence throbbed with the pulsing of a giant heart. In one corner, a dark-haired man lay dreaming, suspended between worlds, floating on tides regulated by the rhythms of the universe.  


“Derek,” Stiles called out, and the man awoke, raising his head to look at Stiles with cat-like eyes that glowed blood-red in the dim light. He was good to look at, Stiles noticed immediately, with a fine, strong face and a gentle, tempting curve to his mouth. He wore a crown of mistletoe, and his brow was bleeding where the leaves touched his skin. His body was young and virile, but there, in the proud, unyielding core of him, Stiles could see the curse, burning like a sickness, a tumor.  


“Go away, stranger,” Derek commanded. “I do not know you. You do not belong here.”  


“You do not know me yet, Derek, but you will. My name is Stiles, and I have come to take you home.”  


He snarled at that, menacingly enough to rival a wolf. “I can’t go back.”  


“You can. You will. You must.”  


“No,” Derek insisted. “I brought the Argent’s into our midst. I practically fed Kate my father’s heart. This is all my fault. Leave me be. I must suffer the consequences alone.”  


“But Derek, you aren't alone.” Derek cocked his head to one side, then the other, still more wolf than man, even here in this womb-like dimension. At Derek’s quizzical stare, Stiles motioned to the opposite corner of the chamber, where two girls were sleeping, limbs entwined. When Derek recognized his sisters, he gasped. “If you remain here, they remain cursed too, and there is no one to protect your mother, no heir to take the throne.”  


Derek turned back toward Stiles with mistrustful eyes. “If I return with you, we will all be healed?”  


Stiles shook his head. “I can explain everything when we leave this place. It is not good to delay. The world awaits.”  


Derek stubbornly moved further away from Stiles, red eyes flashing. “How do I know this isn’t some trick?”  


He shrugged. “You have to trust me.”  


Stiles reached out, grabbed a hold of Derek’s foot, and pulled with all his strength. Shocked, the man began to fight back, but he was seized and squeezed and ultimately ejected into a place of hard surfaces.  


A burning flood poured into Stiles’ nostrils and open mouth as he fell to the floor of his family’s lodge. Derek, now human, used his first breath to scream his outrage. His cry shattered the twilight into a thousand icy slivers, and he lay naked in Stiles arms as if the life had been crushed out of him, instead of restored. Beside them, Laura and Cora shed their fur and crawled on their hands and knees toward their mother.  


The queen knelt down to run one hand through Derek’s sweat soaked hair, then placed the other to Stiles’ cheek.  


“I don’t know how you have done it, but you have brought them back to me, Druid. I am sorry I ever doubted you. You are all your mother said you would be, and more. I owe you my life, and theirs.”  


Stiles looked up at her, but all he could see was the curse burning inside Derek. It was black like death, threatening to eat away his humanity. Now that he had seen the dark heart of the affliction, Stiles knew what needed to be done.  


“It isn’t over yet. There is one more thing we need to do, a powerful ritual to be held in the grove tomorrow at Beltane. I need Derek, he is the source. It is male energy that must be added to the power of the sacred place, and hurled toward your children like the arrows used by the hunters who would do them harm. But instead of harm, when this power reaches them, it will grant them strength they did not know it was possible to possess. From then on, they will win their battles and return to their human forms freely.” 

+++

The Hale’s may have been royalty, but it turned out, once they were all on two legs again, they were pretty rude. “This _Druid_ wants Derek to marry him? _Him?_ ” Cora asked, incredulously. She made it sound like an accusation. She and Stiles’ gazes crossed like swords.  


“You owe this Druid you life, and your humanity.” Queen Talia reprimanded her youngest child with a stern voice and brow, but continued to stroke her hands down the young woman's face, as if memorizing every curve.  


“Beltane is not just about getting married, or fertility,” Stiles replied, exasperated. He could see the corners of his mother’s lips lift in mirth. “Yes, that’s a big part of the festival, but it’s also about triggering _transformation_. Rituals are performed to protect and to encourage growth. When people join their bodies, _life_ flows through them. The ritual can profoundly transform not only someone’s personally, but it could also have that same intense effect on the world. It’s about becoming something _more_ than ourselves.”  


He looked to Derek, imploringly. “The curse still lives inside you, Derek. I saw it. It is like a fire that will never be fully extinguished. But I also saw your eyes, glowing red. If you can learn to control this, you will be an _Alpha_ , like an Alpha wolf; bigger, stronger, a _leader_.  


“The curse will be passed down through generations. The way it exists now, it allows the moon to control your shifts. You will become wolves, and lose your humanity. There is no telling what you will do when that happens, and it leaves you all vulnerable to the Argent’s attack.”  


At this, the Hale sisters gathered around Derek and their mother, huddling in an unconscious show of support and strength.  


“I can not make you or your sister's fully human again, but I can help you transform. _Shapeshift_. Have control. If you perform the ritual in the grove with me at Beltane, you will be able to shift at will, and the human will live inside the wolf, always awake and aware. It won’t have to be a curse, then. If we perform this ritual together, it can be a gift, instead.”  


Derek eyed Stiles’ youthful face. “You are speaking of sex magic?”  


Stiles nodded.  


“Have you had much experience, aside from the games children play?” The memory of some of those games came vividly to Stiles. His friend Lydia’s beautiful face swam to the forefront of his mind, and he blushed redder than her pretty hair.  


“No,” he admitted, “but the ritual must be appropriate to the need, and there was never a need before.” Stiles shrugged his shoulders. His mother gently placed a hand over her mouth to hide a smile, likely remembering all the times in the last few years Stiles had tried to convince her the simplest rituals required him to perform sex magic with someone.  


“Must it be sex?” Derek’s sister, Laura, asked from their mother's side. Stiles looked to Claudia to explain, because it seemed no Hale would believe him about the magic of Beltane, but Stiles’ own mother motioned for him to continue.  


He sighed, resigned to trying once more to convince them. “Energy born from love-making blesses land and animals and people. It's not just _sex_ \- it's a holy union blessed by the gods. Light overpowers darkness on Beltane, as the younger generations topple the old in a hunt. I can make you the predators in this hunt, instead of the prey.”  


“When life commands,” Derek said, silencing any further debate of the issue, much to Stiles’ relief and trepidation, “we must obey. Tomorrow, Druid, you and I will perform this ritual. I hope you are ready.”  


“I am,” Stiles said with bravado, but looking upon Derek’s handsome face, he felt anything but prepared.

 

+++

The warm sun of summer birth rode high in the sky and blood ran hot in everyone’s veins. Fires were lit, water poured, and a solemn pattern was danced on the breast of the earth at the sacred source by Stiles’ father, the Chief Druid. Beyond the forest, the daylight shined bright, but among the trees it was already twilight, the bewitching time when the sun kissed the face of the moon. The warm air of spring caressed Stiles’ face like a beneficent weight.  


The crown of sacred trees loomed dark against the clouds, and in the center was one powerful oak tree, standing upright, staked in place with ropes, like a phallus pointing nakedly toward the sky. The symbol of regeneration was painted on the length of the tree’s peeled trunk, with all the colors of the clans; a riot of crimson, black, blue, green, gold, purple, scarlet and yellow.  


Derek had come to him in his family’s lodge at midday. He eyed Stiles in his ceremonial robe and frowned at the garland atop Stiles’ head. “It’s tradition,” Stiles felt the need to defend.  


Derek reached out a hand to gently straighten the crooked crown of mistletoe and golden stems of grain from the years harvest. “Let’s go,” he said softly.  


They walked together the short way to the clearing, side by side. They did not speak or look at each other. Derek did not even comment on the leather thongs or the jar of oil Stiles held in his hands. If the roles had been reversed, Stiles would not have been able to resist asking questions.  


Stiles was dimly aware that around them the marriage rituals were already taking place, and the women of his clan were dancing with wild abandon around the fertility pole, their eyes dreaming and limbs sweating. Stiles was used to the revelry, but thought that to someone like Derek, his people must seem savage and wild in their lust.  


He had been a boy at Beltane in prior years, but this year Stiles was a man. Already, he could feel the power flowing outward from his body. Sound rose from the ground, following his upturned hands, a muted roar like the distant ocean. Saplings began to sway without any wind, and the air shimmered with a strange luminosity. He looked to Derek then, and watched him take in all that was happening, the bodies spread on the earth in the throes of pleasure, the couples dancing and drinking mead. Stiles’ eyes dropped to the rise and fall of Derek’s chest; he was breathing harder than their short walk required.  


Beneath his hooded robe, Stiles was naked, and blood was quickly rushing to the surface of his skin, stiffening his cock. He longed for the soothing touch of cool air. All his senses were intensifying, and he found that he could _smell_ Derek. Gone was the wildness of the wolf; now Derek smelled like warm bread, haunting and sweet as fresh hay. He smelled like home.  


“Are you sure?” Stiles asked, breathless. Selfishly, he did not want Derek to martyr himself or his body for the sake of breaking his family’s curse. He wanted Derek to want to participate in the ritual, to desire Stiles in return. The thought that Derek would have sex with him, and later regret it, tore open his heart. Regret, Stiles realized, had fangs and claws as sharp as any wolf’s.  


Derek finally turned to him, pupils swallowing the ribbons of color in his eyes. He nodded, once, face earnest and lips parted on a panting breath, like he too was feeling the magic flowing through the air. Like he could feel the power radiating off of Stiles and the rest of the druids. “I’m sure. I want this.”  


Stiles slipped the robe he was wearing off his shoulders, letting the cool air of the forest chill his overheated skin as the material pooled at his bare feet. Derek’s eyes roamed over him from head to toe.  


Stiles opened his arms, and Derek fitted into them like a missing piece of himself.  


He pulled Derek’s tunic over his head and they sought their bed on the fecund earth, a small ways away from the dancers. Stiles arranged Derek, head facing north, arms pointed to the east and west. “Give me your hands.”  


He bound each of Derek’s wrists and ankles with leather thongs. “Do not move your arms or legs while they are tied,” Stiles commanded, and Derek swallowed audibly. All around them, the druids started to chant.  


Stiles coated his fingers in the oil he had used earlier inside his hut to prepare himself for the ritual. Derek’s skin was unbearably hot everywhere Stiles now touched him. When he lay back, Stiles climbed atop him and pressed his slick thumbs into the tender base of Derek’s throat, felt his pulse beat against the slight pressure. Stiles could hardly breathe, only feel all the intimate places their skin touched. He sensed the pounding excitement building inside Derek as well, like water before a dam, desperate for release, but trapped by the leather binding his wrists and ankles.

Stiles’ fingers swept down the center line of Derek’s body, trailing oil and fire. When his hands reached Derek’s taut belly, Derek’s cock stirred and rose like a creature of its own will. He separated Derek’s legs and knelt between them, caressed the insides of his thighs and his testicles with his wet fingertips. 

His clansmen circled them, sunwise. They sang a song with no words, only a melody, a skein of sound around them.

Stiles felt like he could burst open at any moment, like an overripe fruit. Derek’s body began to writhe under Stiles’ feather-light ministrations, and four druids came forward to hold his hands and feet, anchoring him to the Earth. Stiles closed his eyes, torchlight imprinted on the back of his eyelids, and that's when he saw _it_.

Stiles dragged his fingers, still slick and sticky from the oil, through the dirt at Derek’s sides. He lifted his fingertips to draw the pattern he could finally see, a triskelion, through the fine, crinkly hairs on Derek’s chest. Earth and animal and human, connected at the center of all things, all part of one whole. Pure and simple, yet more complex that even a druid could understand. He threw back his flower crowned head and laughed with abandon. Around them, the tribe danced the ancient pattern of pursuit and capture. Stiles felt power flowing through him like a river, from past to future. 

Power and pleasure exploded out of him in great, aching spasms that arched his spine and made him cry out, made Derek gasp and the trees spin around them. Magic released like a spear through the air. 

Stiles reached forward, one hand darting out to wrap slim fingers around Derek’s exposed throat, pressing lightly. His other hand firmly took hold of Derek’s hard dick. “Now,” he commanded, and as he finally sank down onto Derek’s cock, druids from his clan pulled away the leather binding circling Derek’s limbs. 

Derek shifted right before Stiles’ eyes, his face distorting into animal form, and a snarl ripped from his throat. The scent of wildness returned, deeper and richer than before. Their flesh was frantic with need, and bursting with passion too great to be contained.  


Finally able to move his limbs again, Derek wasted no time wrapping one arm around Stiles’ middle, and the other behind his head as he flipped them with supernatural speed. Stiles found himself splayed on his back, half smothered underneath Derek as he grabbed one of Stiles’ legs and pushed it into his chest, swiftly reentering him and thrusting madly.  


Stiles reached up, ran his fingers over the ridges of Derek’s pronounced brow, and down to the tufts of hair at his temples. “Beautiful,” he whispered.  


Derek, caught halfway between a human and a wolf, made a distinctly animal sound, and thrust into Stiles once more before spilling his seed deep inside him.  


“It worked,” Derek breathlessly slurred through his elongated teeth a few moments later.  


“It did.” Stiles couldn't stop the smile spreading across his face. Magic flowed through him, powerful and free. For the first time, he felt at peace with his potential.  


Derek reached down and twined their dirty fingers together. “Maybe we should do it again, just to be sure.”  


Stiles laughed. “Just to be _safe_ ,” he agreed.  


And the best part was, he no longer felt alone.

 

+++

Later, much later, they took the time to really explore each other, tentatively at first but with increasing confidence. Derek explored the length of Stiles’ body with his tongue, looking up every few moments with a mischievous smirk to ask, “Do you like this? And this?”  


For the nine days and nights of Beltane, they laid with no space between them, Derek’s over warm body pressed to every aching inch of Stiles. Derek’s thighs pressed to Stiles’ buttocks, his hands sliding up his rib cage; one resting over Stiles’ heart, the other at his throat. They both shouted with the joy of being alive. When Derek smiled his tiny, delicious smile, Stiles forgot his need for cheese and bread, he even forgot mead. He forgot everything except the hands and mouth and eyes of the Alpha. 

+++

Stiles wanted to keep Derek, wake up to his beautiful face each morning, and dance around the fertility pole with him every Beltane. But he couldn't. If he did, he would be no better than Kate Argent, who had tried to chain a king to drag behind her chariot.  


Stiles would never enslave Derek’s wild spirit.  


When they rose to return to Stiles’ village, Stiles tried to turn his back to Derek, attempted to gain back much needed emotional distance, but Derek would not have it. He caught Stiles’ shoulder and spun him around, forced them to face each other. He looked at Stiles, really looked at him, and Stiles felt Derek in a part of himself no one had ever touched.  


Druids did not make life vows, not even in marriage. Life meant change, and people were free to remain partners only as long as both were willing. It was neither natural nor wise to ask for more, but Derek did so. “Don’t go away from me, Stiles. Not even a step.”  


“You and your family will be leaving soon, Derek. You must return back home, as a King, as an Alpha. You are their leader.”  


“Return with me. I need you by my side, for protection, for companionship. Alone I can do great things, you’ve made it so. But together… together we could build something extraordinary. We balance each other, even I can feel that, and I am no Druid.”  


Stiles thought of his parents, and how much he would miss them, but he knew what they would tell him to do, what he was being called to do. “I must go, sometime,” he said. “No vow is forever.”  


“No, I want you with me, as long as we live. _Promise_ me.” Stiles’ magic cried out, wanting to follow this man to the ends of the Earth.  


Stiles tucked his head into the hollow of Derek’s shoulder. “Then I shall be yours, forever. By sun and moon, by fire and water, by earth and air, I swear it. Where there is an Alpha, there will always be an Emissary.” It was an extravagant declaration, Stiles knew, but it felt _right_. It felt like a vow that would last.

+++

A week later, he took his cloak down from the peg at the entrance to his hut, and took up his father’s old oak staff, worn smooth by generations of fingers. He was leaving the clan, his measly possession folded into a blanket his mother had made for him when he was a child. He would miss his parents, but these people had never truly felt like his brethren. He never experienced a connection with them as he did with Derek, the soul bond his mother had spoken of so many years ago. What he and Derek had was as strong as the current running through the veins of the earth.  


Claudia smiled at him and ran her hands over his head one last time. “Destiny calls you, as I always knew it would. We will meet again, my son. Some other time, some other place.”  


As they walked away from the camp, hand in hand, toward an unknown future, Stiles could feel the promise of magic thrumming between him and Derek. Alone they would prosper, but together… together they could be unstoppable. It was primal, written in their bones.  


As his clan hold faded from view, he visualized the triskelion as he had drawn it on Derek’s chest, the pattern his mother had told him he would one day see. He had been looking for answers in all the wrong places, he realized now. He'd needed to look no further than his own heart.  


As he gazed upon his Alpha and their supernatural pack, he knew; there was more than one kind of magic.  


Stiles was a Druid, an Emissary. He would learn all he could.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm Jamie, come yell about Sterek with me on [tumblr.](http://jmeelee.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Any knowledge of Druids I have comes from the books _Druids_ and _The Greener Shore_ by Morgan Llywelyn. They were huge inspirations for this story.


End file.
